But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz

by Geoff Dyer

In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the world's greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of But Beautiful, and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician’s style.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Jazz, Essays, History, Short Stories, Biography

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 1992

About the author

Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1958. He was educated at the local Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is the author of four novels: Paris Trance, The Search, The Colour of Memory, and, most recently, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; a critical study of John Berger, Ways of Telling; five genre-defying titles: But Beautiful (winner of a 1992 Somerset Maugham Prize, short-listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize), The Missing of the Somme, Out of Sheer Rage (a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award), Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It (winner of the 2004 W. H. Smith Best Travel Book Award), and The Ongoing Moment (winner of the ICP Infinity Award for Writing on Photography), and Zona (about Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker). His collection of essays, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012. He is also the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays and co-editor, with Margaret Sartor, of What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney. A new book, Another Great Day at Sea, about life aboard the USS George H W Bush has just been published by Pantheon.
In 2003 he was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship; in 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2006 he received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2009 he was the recipient of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Best Comic Novel and the GQ Writer of the Year Award (for Jeff in Venice Death in Varanasi). His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. His website is geoffdyer.com

Reviews

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

“—Tanto dolor y sufrimiento. Pero…, pero… — Pero ¿qué? — Pero… hermoso. Igual que besar lágrimas”

El título es muy representativo de lo que aquí pueden encontrar, un hermoso libro sobre jazz y acerca de un puñado de grandes artistas de la era dorada de esta música maravillosa (mi edición es además un precioso ejemplar que publicó Círculo de lectores). Bien es cierto que lo disfrutarán mucho más aquellos que amen el jazz (entre los que me encuentro), pero el libro tiene valor literario en sí mismo, fue Premio Somerset Maugham en 1992.

“… estaba el ritmo, detrás del ritmo el blues, detrás del blues, ese grito, el grito de aliento de los esclavos”

Algo que llama poderosamente la atención en estos textos sobre episodios de la vida, reales o imaginados, de algunos grandes músicos (Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Ben Webster, Charlie Mingus, Chet Baker y Art Pepper), con el hilo conductor de un viaje por carretera de Duke Ellington con Harry Carney, son unas circunstancias que comenta el autor en su epílogo:

“A cualquiera que se interese por el jazz, enseguida le llama la atención la alta tasa de víctimas entre quienes lo practican… Prácticamente todos los músicos negros de jazz fueron objeto de la discriminación racial y los malos tratos (Art Blakey, Miles Davis y Bud Powell recibieron palizas de la policía). Mientras que los contemporáneos de Coleman Hawkins y Lester Young, que dominaron el jazz en los años treinta, acabaron alcohólicos, la generación de músicos que forjó la revolución del bebop de los cuarenta y se consolidó en los cincuenta fue víctima, casi como epidemia, de adición a la heroína… La drogodependencia llevaba directamente… a la cárcel. El camino a las salas psiquiátricas de los hospitales, aunque más tortuoso, estaba igual de concurrido"

En función de ello, el autor se pregunta si esta música no exige un tributo terrible a sus creadores. Si su extraordinario y rápido desarrollo a lo largo de las décadas de los 40, 50 y 60 no está en la base de tanta desgracia. Sin duda, el hecho de que esta música no se interprete nunca de la misma forma dos veces, que se cree música en el momento, exige unas mentes muy especiales y quizás proclives a excesos.

“… melodías que florecen y se marchitan como flores, el impulso que nunca pierde fuerza y sin esfuerzo se convierte en balada, las teclas se te ofrecen, compitiendo entre ellas por ser tocadas, como si el piano llevara esperando cien años la oportunidad de saber lo que se siente al ser una trompeta o un saxofón en manos de un negro” (del texto dedicado a Bud Powell)

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like this review, credit Geoff Dyer, not the reviewer. The words are his.
And read the book!
All I’ve done is make selections.


Geoff Dyer has written several books, both fiction and non-fiction. This book is a bit of both. His preface refers to an improvisation, and calls it imaginative criticism. As well, it contains invented dialogue and action. (But in his list of references, he does cite source material for much of what could be read as completely invented.) Scenes were intended as “commentary either on a piece of music or on the particular qualities of a musician.

For my part, I read it in the only way I could, as a post-modern piece of “creative non-fiction” like The End of Night. I feel no hesitancy at all in giving it the rating I have. I was absolutely enthralled. If Dyer can ever again achieve these heights, I sure hope I find out the name of the book.

For each of the pieces in the book, I start with a few bits and pieces about the artist, pulled from Wiki. Then following a picture or two, I simply quote from the book.

I had more than enough to fill a review, but couldn’t bear to cut. So I’ve tucked a couple of the quote blocks into my writing. Pardon please.


DUKE ELLINGTON (1899-1974) AND HARRY CARNEY (1910-74)

The Duke – well, you know him. Carney? His baritone sax influenced generations of later players. A 45-year tenure in Duke’s orchestra. In the early years he was the driver, Duke the passenger as they drove from one gig to the next across the country.

This part of Dyer’s story is done in an eight-part composition, one movement preceding each the following pieces.

- The fields on either side of the road were as dark as the night sky. The land was so flat that if you stood on a barn you could see the light of a car like stars on the horizon, pulling toward you for an hour before the red taillights ghosted slowly to the east. Except for the steady drone of the car there was no noise.
- He had written more hours of music than any other American and most of it began like this, scrawled on anything that came to hand: serviettes, envelopes, postcards, cardboard ripped from cereal packets.
- Hardly any of his music came to him as music. Everything started with a mood, an impression, something he’d seen or heard which he then translated into music.
- All the time he’d been travelling by train he’d stored up memories like that, searching later for a tone that corresponded to things he’d seen: colors like the baked red of evening in Santa Fe or flames licking yellow in the Ohio night, the whole sky flooded with the rust-color heat of furnaces…. Long train, said Harry at last
- It was not yet light but the darkness of night had given way to the predawn grayness when lights appear in houses and trees wait like thin cattle on the horizon.
- Yawning, Duke ordered the meal he had been living off for God knows how many years: steak and grapefruit, coffee. Harry asked for eggs and watched Duke slowly stir his coffee… The bags under his eyes suggested a backlog of missed sleep that would probably take ten years to clear.
- A thin attendant with bad teeth and a baseball cap limped out toward the pumps … He filled up the talk, grinning, and asked Harry if that was who he thought it was in the car. Harry nodded and Duke got out of the car, shook the guy’s thin fingers, and watched the happiness spread over his features like dawn over a dilapidated town.
- They drove on past billboards and tenements, railroad tracks and the dark entrances of thirstless bars.. It was a run-down town, smelling of dust and sad factories… Harry pulled up at a silver-fronted diner and went in to ask… he saw Harry, smiling, emerging from the diner and heading to the car… - Wrong town completely, Duke…

LESTER YOUNG (1909-59)

Tenor sax. Late 30’s recorded and ran with Billie Holiday, who gave him his nickname - Pres. 1944 inducted into the army. A drug addict and an alcoholic, should have been declared unfit, instead was subjected to living hell for over a year before being booted out. At Young's funeral Holiday said, "I'll be the next one to go." She died four months later at age 44.




Dennis Stock’s justly famous photograph of Lester in the Alvin Hotel




Young at the Famous Door, New York, N.Y., c. September 1946. Photo by William P. Gottlieb.

It seemed like he’d been here at the Alvin for ten years or more, ever since he got out of the stockade and out of the army … Gradually he’d stopped hanging out with the guys he played with, had taken to eating food in his room. Then he had stopped eating altogether, seeing practically no one and hardly leaving his room unless he had to. With every word addressed to him he shrank from the world a little further until the isolation went from being circumstantial to something he had internalized – but once that happened he realized it had always been there, the loneliness thing: in his playing it had always been there.
///
… was in 1957. He remembered the date but that got him nowhere. The problem was remembering how long ago 1957 was. Anyway, it was all very simple really: there was life before the army, which was sweet, then there was the army, a nightmare from which he’d never woken up.
///
He waited for the phone to ring, expecting to hear someone break the news to him that he had died in his sleep. He woke with a jolt and snatched up the silent phone. The receiver swallowed his words in two gulps like a snake. The sheets were wet as seaweed, the room full of the ocean mist of green neon.

THELONIUS MONK (1917-82)

Pianist and composer. Unique improvisational style, wrote "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser". The second-most recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, who composed more than 1,000 pieces. Monk wrote about 70.

When someone else was soloing he got up and did his dance… His dancing was a way of conducting, finding a way into the music. He had to get inside a piece … work himself into it like a drill biting into wood. Once he had buried himself in the song, knew it inside out, then he would play all around it, never inside it …
His body was his instrument and the piano was just a means of getting the sound out of his body at the rate and in the quantities he wanted …
He could do anything and it seemed right. He’d reach into his pocket for a handkerchief, grab it, and play with just that hand, holding the handkerchief, mopping up notes that have spilled from the keyboard, wipe his face while keeping the melody with the other hand as though playing the piano came as easy to him as blowing his nose.
///
- Once I complained that the runs he had asked for were impossible.
- You mean they don’t give you a chance to breath?
- No, but …
- Then you can play ‘em.
People were always telling him they couldn’t play things, but once he gave them a choice – You got an instrument? Well, you wanna play it or throw it away? – they found they could play. He made it seem stupid to be a musician and not be able to do things…
- Stop playing all this bullshit, man. Swing, if you can’t play anything else play the melody. Keep the beat all the time. Just because you’re not a drummer doesn’t mean you don’t gotta swing.
- Which of these notes should I hit?
- Hit any of ‘em, he said at last, his voice a gargle-murmur.
- And here, is that C sharp or C natural?
- Yeah, one a them
///
Nellie. If he had been a janitor she would have looked after him just the same as she did when they were jetting first class all over the world. Monk was helpless without her … She was so integral to his creative well-being that she may as well be credited as co-composer for most of his pieces.
///
- Yes, I would say there was a lot of sadness in him. The things that happened to him, most of it stayed in him. He let a little of that out in music … “Round Midnight,” that’s a sad song.

BUD POWELL (1924-66)

Piano. Born and raised in Harlem. January ’45, separated from the band in Philly, apprehended drunk, beaten by the railroad police, hospitalized for headaches (Bellevue, then a state psychiatric hospital). ’45-’47 career rebounded, then November ’47, a bar fight, hit over his eye with a bottle - Bellevue again, institutionalized again (11 months). Time enough to express persecution feelings (racism) and be subjected to electroconvulsive therapy (twice). Emotionally unstable for the rest of his career. Dyer’s narrative is a long drawn out nightmare. Absolutely shattering.

Some of the best photos of Bud Powell were taken by Dennis Stock but – ironically, since this chapter relies so heavily on photographs – I did not come across them until the manuscript was complete.





See https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

BEN WEBSTER (1909-73)

Tenor saxophonist, born in Kansas City. Played with Ellington from 1935, by 1940 was full time with the band. From the mid-40s spent twenty years playing in New York, then in ’65 moved to Europe for the rest. One year in London, four in Amsterdam, the last four in Copenhagen.

John Jeremy’s documentary The Brute and the Beautiful




Milt Hinton’s photograph of Ben Webster, Red Allen, and Pee Wee Russell







See https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...



CHARLES MINGUS (1922-79)

Double bassist, composer, bandleader. Espoused collective improvisation. In creating his bands, looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, but also personalities. Known as The Angry Man of Jazz for his temper: onstage eruptions, exhortations to band members, dismissals. In his last years suffered from ALS; died in Mexico, ashes were scattered in the Ganges.

His rage never left him. Even when he was calm the pilot light of his anger was blinking away.
People said he was larger than life – as if life was a tiny feeble thing, a jacket several sizes too small, about to rip every time he moved.
Mingus Mingus Mingus – not a name but a verb, even thought was a form of action, internalized momentum.
Gradually he assumed the weight and dimensions of his instrument. He got so heavy that the bass was something he just slung over his shoulder like a duffel bag, hardly noticing the weight. The bigger he got, the smaller the bass became. He could bully it into doing what he wanted.
///
He picked up The New York Times and unfolded it roughly, flattened it out in the what-is-this-shit? way he reserved for newspapers… read with impatience, clutching it as if he were grabbing it by the lapels …
Sacked from Duke’s band for chasing Juan Tizol across the stage with a fire ax and splitting Tizol’s chair in two just as Duke was setting up “Take the A Train”. Smiling, Duke asked him later why he hadn’t let him know what was going to happen so he could have cued a few chords, written something into the score.
Nobody could put up with Mingus and Mingus refused to put up with anybody or anything… If he had been a ship the ocean would have been in his way.
///
Onstage he’d be yelling instructions, cussing out the rhythm section, calling out “Hold it, hold it” halfway through a piece because he didn’t like the way it was going, explaining to the audience that Jaki Byard couldn’t play shit and he was sacking him on the spot, starting the piece over again and rehiring the pianist half an hour later.
///
Mingus happy – nothing could beat the thrill, the rush of that. At full tilt the band felt like sprinting cheetahs, cheetahs chased by an elephant that always looked as though it might trample them underfoot.
///
In Germany he went on a rampage, smashing doors, microphones, recording equipment … His solos got heavier, swung with the movement of a gravedigger’s shovel, weighed down by damp earth… In Bellevue smells were the first thing he noticed… All through the night someone was screaming… the stiffness in his fingers never left now, some days they felt not simply stiff but numb… difficult to find the notes on the bass, knew where they were but unable to make the fingers grip… Now record companies were eager for everything he came up with, just the germ of an idea enough… talking was becoming difficult, his tongue lay in his mouth like an old man’s dick. Forming words like talking through a mouthful of wool… Than at the White House, an all-star concert and party. He in a wheelchair, trapped inside himself. When they called for a round of applause for the greatest living composer in jazz and everyone rose at once he broke down, tears streaming down his face, his body convulsed with great heaving sobs – the President running up to comfort him.
///
Mexico. When he was very weak he saw a bird hovering high in the sky, even its wings perfectly still. Its shadow lay in his lap; summoning all his energy he found the strength to stroke it, to ruffle its feathers.

CHET BAKER (1929-88)

Trumpet, flugelhorn, vocalist. The promise of his early career: “James Dean, Sinatra, and Bix, rolled into one." Began using heroin in the ‘50s, resulted in a lifelong addiction. Both jailed and expelled in Europe. Savagely beaten in California in ‘68 in a drug-related incident, cut lips, broken teeth. In and out of jail frequently before a career resurgence in the late ‘70s and '80s.






Carol Reiff’s photo of Chet Baker onstage at Birdland

See https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...


ART PEPPER (1925-82)

Alto saxophonist and clarinetist. Became a heroin addict in the ‘40s, his career interrupted by drug-related prison sentences four times, the final two in San Quentin. Don McGlynn’s excellent documentary Art Pepper: Notes of a Jazz Survivor.

- Hey, it’s good to see you Art..
- You too man … Hey, listen, can I cop from you?
- Man, you don’t change. How long you been out? Are we talking days, hours, or what?
- We’re talking minutes, man, said Art, smiling; Egg laughed out loud. So can I cop?
- You been out twenty minutes and you already looking to go straight back, said Egg, shaking his head. Whassamatter with you, man …
///
In San Quentin the grey prison fatigues make him feel like an actor performing scenes from the life of Art Pepper…
The black guy talks to a thin guy with an Afro and frightened eyes who trots off across the yard, returns with a dull-looking alto…
- Take us on a trip
- I haven’t touched a horn in a year.
- So now’s the time.
- I don’t know if I can still play.
- You can play.
… For a couple minutes he plays nothing but the melody, then begins to move away from it, cautiously …
After a flurry of twisted notes it seems there is nowhere for the solo to go. No one moves, the cons stand where they are, surrounding him like a fighter who has been beaten to the canvas…
Then, summoning everything, he searches for the highest note, reaches it – just – and soars clear…
When he finishes he is sweating. He nods his head so slightly it is like a twitch slowed right down. All around him is the silence of the prisoners listening…
No applause… Everyone aware now of the silence in the yard… Aware too that this silence is in appreciation of the music, an act of collective will, that there is always an inescapable dignity about silence… No one moves because in order for there to be silence in a place like this, time has to stop…
So they wait. The silence smolders; the longer it stews, the more violent will be its eventual eruption into noise… The silence is like a slowly expanding horizon, a view of distance…
The prisoners form a map, the contours of their gaze defining the pale figure who is breathing quietly, cradling the rusty alto in his arms, raising a hand to his mouth as he clears his throat.
///
1977. His first gig at the Vanguard in New York.
He is fifty-two, plays through a swamp of pain that leaves him clutching the horn like a crutch...he used to think about what he was playing, and while this distracted it also reassured because it meant that in between these spasms of self-consciousness he had simply been playing- and he played best when least conscious of what he was doing. At a certain point playing was a wild amnesia of technique"
///
In June, Laurie arranges an interview with the head psychiatrist of the hospital whose methadone program Art is enrolled in…
The doctor scribbles a few things in his notebook, among them, in handwriting deliberately more knotted than usual, a note reminding himself to track down some of the records this man has apparently made.

AFTERWARD: TRADITION, INFLUENCE, AND INNOVATION

30+ page essay, no fiction, the amazing concluding movement to Dyer’s jazz concerto, on the state of Jazz (20 years ago now): The ongoing influence of the tradition ensures that past masters are present throughout the music's evolution and development...some of the newest sounding music is that which is most saturated in the past. Ideas of backward and forward, the sense of past and present, of old and new dreams, begin to dissolve into each other in the twilight of perpetual noon. This is PART of the book, it must be read.

Followed by a list of written and visual sources for each piece, and a great discography for the classic jazz masters; and post-classic and world artists including Rabih Abou-Khalil, Jan Garbarek, Keith Jarrett, Wynton Marsalis, and many others.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geoff Dyer is a writer of non-fiction, a critic of literature and music and film. But he is a fiction-writer too, and in But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz], he uses his fiction-writer tools to explore the world of jazz, offering a kind of criticism that is more memorable and more resonant than any critical essay could be.

The book consists of a series of fictionalized vignettes which reveal the personalities of a few geniuses of jazz: an aging Lester Young at the Alvin Hotel, Thelonious Monk and his wife Nellie in the West Sixties, the vicious beating (and resurrection) of Bud Powell, Ben Webster traveling Europe by train, the ever-angry, explosive Charlie Mingus, Chet Baker of the beautiful and ruined face, and the crazy junkie life of Art Pepper, all seven tied together by the road trip conversations of Duke Ellington and his chauffeur/baritone sax/old friend Harry Carney passing the time on the way to another gig.

If you’re not into classic jazz, you might as well skip this book, but if you know who the people listed above are, and you dig their music, I highly recommend this book.

Oh, there is an essay at the end, and it is a very good essay too, but I’ve forgot what it is about already. But I still remember the rest: courtly Lester walking with Lady Day, Monk introducing his favorite lamppost, bloody Bud Powell nightsticked on the sidewalk, Ben blowing his tenor for a stranger on the train, Mingus demolishing his phone, Chet Baker staring into an unforgiving mirror, junkie jailbird Art Pepper painting the portrait of a woman with his music.

And the Duke and Harry, of course, forever friends, forever on the road.

[H (no longer expecting notifications) Balikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a truism about jazz: some like to just hear the song’s melody played straight; others, appreciate the improvisation that uses the melody as a jumping off point. The latter like jazz.

Geoff Dyer states in his title that this is “a book about jazz.” What he doesn’t tell you is that, in looking at some of the great jazz musicians, his prose is going to riff on the words as a musician would riff on the melody. He gives us an ongoing dialogue between Duke Ellington and Harry Carney while they move from gig to gig around the country. He gives you his riff on Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Ben Webster, Chet Baker, and Art Pepper.

I can’t describe it any better but I can give you an example. Here is a selection from his chapter on Thelonious Monk: "Technically, he was a limited player in that there were all sorts of things he couldn’t do---but he could do everything he wanted to…He played each note as though astonished by the previous one, as though every touch of his fingers on the keyboard was to correct an error and this touch in turn became an error to be corrected and so the tune never quite ended up the way it was meant to…You always felt that at the heart of the tune was a beautiful melody that had come out back to front, the wrong way around. Listening to him was like watching someone figit, you felt uncomfortable until you started doing it too…You had to see Monk to hear his music properly. The most important instrument in the group---whatever the format---was his body. He didn’t play piano really. His body was his instrument and the piano was just a means of getting the sound out of his body at the rate and in the quantities he wanted….His body fills in all the gaps in the music; without seeing him it always sounds like something’s missing but when you see him even piano solos acquire a sound as full as a quartet’s. The eye hears what the ear misses.”

So, this is Dyer’s approach: Novel, expressive, and filled with some rare insights; not for everyone. But if you can dig it, it can be very rewarding.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a Lonely Tenement

He awoke at 6am, and slid out of the bed in the 20’s studio apartment he’d leased for six months.

It was still dark outside, but he could see a sliver of golden glow in a crack in the curtains.

He went over to it, and drew the curtains slightly apart.

Across the gap in the horseshoe-shaped apartment building, but down one level, he could see the source of the glow.

A woman, in her pyjamas, was prancing around her bedroom, well, between the wardrobe and her bed.

She was trying to make a decision about which of two costumes to wear that day.

The wind changed direction, and he heard her radio. It was playing John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”.

He left the window, flicked on the lights in his studio and tuned the radio onto WBGO.

When he returned to the window, he drew the curtains open and noticed that the woman was now wearing her choice of day clothes.

It was then that she saw him.

“Hey, what the fuck are you looking at, man?” she called out.

“I didn’t see anything, honest, Maria,” he replied with a laugh.

“You can see anything you wanna, if you come on down here for breakfast,” she said, “I’m gonna make some pancakes, maple syrup, Canadian, too.”

“Sorry, Maria, I’ve got to finish my book. I’m on the last chapter. Today might be the big day.”

“Good...tonight, you and I…you and I...we’re going dancing.”

“It’s a date. I promise.”

He left the window with a fleeting smile, turned on the laptop that sat on his writer’s bureau, then opened the fridge door to see what was in store for him.

It was empty.

Today, as he had expected, he would write on an empty stomach, he would know what it felt like to be a jazz musician, like one of his heroes, only he knew that, tonight, there would be a happy ending.

And tomorrow, well, tomorrow, there would be pancakes.



A Jazz Curator’s Egg

For all but the last 30 pages of this book, I was prepared to say that it was the best book I had ever read about music of any description.

My reluctance reflects the way the book is divided into two parts.

The second part is a formal essay on Tradition, Innovation and Influence in Jazz Music.

The first and most impressive part is a collection of semi-fictionalized vignettes about incidents in the lives of eight jazz greats.

If Geoff Dyer had omitted the essay, I would have given the book five stars.

Ironically, perhaps, because he saw fit to include it, I will only give it four stars.

However, I will still say that the first part is the best writing I have ever read about music of any description.

Figures of Eight

The seven (out of eight) greats who get fully-fledged vignettes are Lester Young (tenor sax), Thelonious Monk (piano), Bud Powell (piano), Ben Webster (tenor sax), Charles Mingus (bass, composer), Chet Baker (trumpet) and Art Pepper (alto sax).

In between these sections are short passages describing a road trip between gigs, a long day’s journey into night, in which Duke Ellington (piano, composer) and his friend and band member of 45 years, Harry Carney (baritone sax) drive, converse and compose.

I originally included only Duke in my list of eight, but that is a product of ignorance on my part. I am less familiar with Duke Ellington’s music than the others and did not appreciate how crucial Harry was to his achievements.

So it should be nine.

Also, while the essay is more wide-ranging (which is part of its problem), John Coltrane (tenor sax) and, to a lesser extent, Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Miles Davis (trumpet) and Keith Jarrett (piano) are singled out for more extensive critical analysis.

So in a broader sense there could have been 13.

There is no real explanation of why these and not others (such as Art Tatum, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon or Louis Armstrong).

Dancing about Architecture

This relative absence of analytical detail is the essence of the appeal of the first part of the book.

There’s a well-known expression that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (even though it’s difficult to know who to attribute it to):

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/...

Geoff Dyer’s writing forces us to reconsider just how much writing can add value to the experience of music.

Ultimately, in communicating with each other about music, most of us only have words to use, and words can be such a blunt and imprecise instrument.

In trying to do justice to the music he loves, Dyer has created a unique way of writing that is impressionistic and lyrical and inspiring.

Just as John Berger opened our eyes to ways of seeing, Dyer opens our minds to ways of writing and, therefore, of reading and listening to and appreciating music.

Improvising about Jazz

Faced with the desire to write a book about jazz, Dyer had to abandon the techniques of conventional criticism (including metaphors and similes that he had previously used to evoke what he thought was happening) and embrace improvisation.

What he came up with is just as much “imaginative criticism as fiction”.

His raw materials weren’t just recordings of the music, they included other biographies, criticism, journalism and personal interviews with musicians, family and friends.

Most importantly, as he was playing the music, he was scrutinizing photos of the musicians.

His genius is embodied in the way he utilised these photos.

We tend to look at a photo as a static image. It captures something at a unique point of time, as if we don’t know what happened before or after that moment.

However, equipped with all of this context, Dyer starts to see more in these photos, in particular a Milt Hinton photo published in the book.

He speculates that the “felt duration” of the photo extends to what has just happened or is about to happen.

He also argues that a good jazz photo is not silent, that it is there to be listened to as well as looked at, that the best jazz photos are saturated with the sound of their subjects.

What he aspires to do and succeeds in doing is to bring these photos to life.

It’s almost as if the process of exposure of the film caught not just one moment in time, but many, not just vision, but sound as well.

He turns photos into fully-fledged audiovisual works.

Of jazz photography, he says:

“A photograph of a jazz musician in full flight can bring us as close to the act – or vicarious essence – of artistic creation as a photograph of an athlete can to the act – or vicarious essence – of running.”

Just Add Some Animation

Dyer enhances the experience of listening to the music as well.

Most of the music was recorded a long time ago, and most of the artists are long dead.

He animates the musicians as well as their music.

The music matters more to us, because the musicians matter to us.

Dyer creates a sense of music as constant movement.

Of Mingus, he says:

“His thought was the exact opposite of concentration: that implies stillness, silence, long periods of intense absorption; he preferred moving very quickly, covering a lot of ground.”

He quotes Charlie Parker:

”Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom…if you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”

The Importance of Improvisation

Much music is recorded soon after it is first composed, so that what is captured by the recording is a snapshot of the work early in its chronological development.

Sometimes, studio recordings sound tentative compared with live versions that reflect a history of playing, improvising and improvement.

Improvisation is one of the key distinguishing features of jazz.

Much jazz is instrumental rather than vocal, so it isn’t hamstrung by lyrics and expectations of the vocal performance.

In his essay, Dyer writes equally beautifully about the role of improvisation in jazz:

”From time to time in his solos a saxophonist may quote from other musicians, but every time he picks up his horn he cannot avoid commenting, automatically and implicitly, even if only through his own inadequacy, on the tradition that has been laid at his feet. At its worst this involves simple repetition...sometimes it involves exploring possibilities that were previously only touched upon. At its best it expands the possibilities of the form.”

Standards such as Monk’s “’Round Midnight” become “springboards for improvisation” and innovation:

”Successive versions add up to what [George] Steiner calls a ‘syllabus of enacted criticism’…this labile relation between composition and improvisation is one of the sources of jazz’ ability to constantly replenish itself.”

The Importance of Tradition

Just as Dyer emphasises innovation, he values tradition:

”The positive side of this relation to the past is that moving deeper into the tradition can be as much a voyage of discovery as moving forward through it: instead of following the river to its mouth we trace it to its source. As you move further back, so you are able to recognise the special traits of the predecessors; it is like seeing a photo of your great-grandfather and recognizing the origins of your grandchildren’s features in his face.”

Note how Dyer reverts to photography for his analogy.

Similarly, in his last sentence, he reverts to his image of what comes before and after:

”Ideas of forward and backward, the sense of past and present, of old and new dreams, begin to dissolve into each other in the twilight of perpetual noon.”

Straight, No Chaser

While I’m not sure I get what “the twilight of perpetual noon” means, there is some fine writing in the essay.

The material about Coltrane deserved to be fictionalized, he is so important to both the dangerous and the spiritual facets of jazz.

However, what remains is an essay that tries to pack too much into the last 30 pages. It resorts to lists and name-checking, some of it is both exhaustive and exhausting.

It leaves us feeling the after-effects of a downer after the extreme high of the first 180 pages, which are unsurpassed.

It left me wondering whether Dyer hoped that his impressionistic writings would enhance his more seriously critical material by association.

Instead, all that five stars required was “Straight, No Chaser”.

[Enrique · Rating 4 out of 5]

"El doctor escuchó fríamente las respuestas estrambóticas y absurdas de Lester Young, convencido de que era homosexual, pero dando un diagnóstico más complejo en su informe: "Estado de constitución psicopatica manifestada por drogadicción (marihuana, barbitúricos), alcoholismo crónico, y nomadismo...Estrictamente un problema de disciplina" -como ocurrencia a modo de resumen añadió en su diagnóstico : "Jazz"

Leer a Geoff Dyer es toda una sensación para los sentidos, lo digo en el sentido literal de la expresión. Me explico: cuando lees cualquier novela, eres tú y el autor los que formáis la  historia y los personajes, el lector hace su construcción a base de imaginación y del buen hacer del autor. Sin embargo cuando lees a Dyer te das cuenta de que es una experiencia más global la que sientes. P. e: nos cuenta que Thelonius Monk se levanta de su piano y se pone a bailar cuando algún compañero de la banda toca un solo. Y tú no puedes hacer otra cosa que (además de imaginarlo) ir a YouTube y ver un par de vídeos o tres en que el amigo Monk hace una exhibición tan espontánea como divertida de como él vive el jazz por todos los poros de su cuerpo, bailando de forma un tanto ridícula, en círculos, con los ojos cerrados, siempre a punto de caerse y ajeno a todo, con esos gorros campesinos, y la forma entrar luego en el tema de forma atropellada, sentándose rápidamente a picotear el piano de esa forma tan característica suya y tan genial. Te hace estar continuamente interactuando y buscando cosas fuera del libro.

Igualmente cuando leí otro libro suyo, Zona: vi el trailer de la película en que se basa el libro (Stalker), luego la peli, leí después el libro Stalker de los Hnos. Strugatsky, diría que hasta se me quedó la música y el ambiente que transmite, el clima.
 
Sus obras tienen un tono muy bueno, muy especial. Distinto.
 
Como diría el amigo Fosse, Dyer aporta algo a la literatura que antes no estaba. Cuando leí Zona, como decía, te hace interesarte por un director de culto como Tarkovski, y ver sus películas, y en definitiva hacer que te llame la atención algo que no es de tu negociado; aunque el jazz sí es una de mis aficiones recientes de los últimos años.
 
Da igual de lo que escriba, sientes que será interesante. Creo que ha escrito un libro sobre el tenista Roger Federer; creo que en algún momento lo leeré, no por Federer, sino por la forma en que nos lo cuente Dyer.
 
Por cierto que el cuento de Art Pepper, es estupendo, el que más se asemeja al formato novela, para mí lo mejor del libro. Lo peor el recopilatorio final.

Un último apunte, la edición antigua que he manejado de Círculo de lectores es una maravilla, la combinación de fotos, pequeñas anotaciones, portadas de discos en los márgenes.

[lorinbocol · Rating 4 out of 5]

uno dei libri che vorrei sempre avere con me, la musica che vorrei sempre ascoltare. con un ritmo veloce tipo bebop, alternato ad assoli struggenti e un po' folli alla lester young, dyer mette su un contest che inchioda dall'inizio alla fine.

[João Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Allen, Ben Webster e Pee Wee Russell - Nova Iorque 1957 - Fotografia de Milton J. Hinton

O escritor inglês Geoff Dyer inicia ”Mas É Bonito” (1991) com a descrição de uma viagem de carro, os passageiros são Duke Ellington (1899 – 1974), o pendura e Harry Carney (1910 – 1974), o condutor, uma viatura que já percorreu, talvez um milhão de quilómetros, sempre de concerto para concerto, de cidade para cidade.
O registo da viagem de Duke Ellington e de Harry Carney é intercalado por sete “histórias” de sete músicos de Jazz - Lester Young (Pres ou Prez) (1909 – 1959), Thelonious Monk (1917 – 1982), Bud Powell (1924 – 1966), Ben Webster (1909 – 1973), Charles Mingus (1922 – 1979), Chet Baker (1929 – 1988) e Art Pepper (1925 – 1982).
Em cada um dos relatos a versatilidade da escrita de Deoff Dyer é deslumbrante, nenhuma das “histórias” é contada de uma forma convencional mas reunindo esboços curtos sobre as vidas vividas dos músicos, quase sempre no “fio da navalha”, de uma forma precária e excêntrica, com inúmeras mudanças no espaço, no tempo e, sobretudo, no humor dos artistas.
Deoff Dyer vai escrevendo, adaptando, improvisando, inventando – um texto numa excepcional homenagem aos músicos referenciados, mas, igualmente, um esplêndido tributo ao Jazz, um género musical muitas vezes injustamente pouco valorizado, improvisando as emoções dos artistas, que vão construindo as suas músicas, concebendo os sons a partir de conceitos criativos que advêm das suas vivências pessoais, compondo notas musicais que se transformam em melodias inesquecíveis e que se perpetuam através dos tempos.
”Mas É Bonito” é muito mais do que um livro sobre Jazz em que Geoff Dyer sintetiza admiravelmente além de alguns episódios dos músicos aludidos, mas, simultaneamente, uma forma de arte cuja essência é a improvisação e a espontaneidade, num som único e na evocação de um tempo em que os intérpretes eram dominados pelo desespero, pela autodestruição e pela doença mental, quase sempre associada à dependência do álcool e das drogas, culminando na violência, directa ou indirectamente relacionada com a discriminação e o ódio racial – não é por acaso que alguns destes músicos acabaram por viver na Europa.
”Mas É Bonito” é um livro imprescindível… Quer como crítica imaginativa ou quer como ficção.


Chet Baker em palco no Birdland - Nova Iorque 1955 - Fotografia Carol Reiff


No Prefácio de ”Mas É Bonito” (1991) o escritor inglês Geoff Dyer (n. 1958) escreve:
”QUANDO COMECEI A ESCREVER ESTE LIVRO não sabia que forma iria ter. Para mim isto era uma vantagem porque significava que teria de improvisar e assim, desde o primeiro momento, a escrita seria estimulada pela característica central do próprio tema.
(…)
Aquilo que se segue é, portanto quer crítica imaginativa, quer ficção.
Muitas das cenas têm origem em episódios bem conhecidos ou até mesmo lendários: por exemplo, quando Chet Baker ficou sem dentes.
Estes episódios fazem parte de um reportório comum de factos e informação – são standards e, por outras palavras, o que faço aqui são as minhas versões, especificando os factos de forma mais ou menos breve e depois improvisando à volta deles, e em alguns casos afastando-me deles por completo.
(…)
Alguns episódios nem sequer têm origem em factos: estas cenas totalmente inventadas podem ser vistas como composições originais (embora por vezes citem os músicos envolvidos).
(…)
Ao longo do livro, o meu objectivo era o de mostrar os músicos tal como eu os vejo e não como eles são. Evidentemente, a distância que separa estas duas ambições costuma ser enorme. O mesmo se passa nos momentos em que embora pareça que estou a descrever os músicos em acção o que estou a fazer é projectar o meu acto de ouvir a música no momento em que ela foi concebida trinta anos antes.
(…).”

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of vignettes is a mix of fiction and nonfiction. Dyer uses actual events of real jazz musicians to create fictional retellings of events. What these vignettes document us a common theme of jazz musicians if this era; drugs, drink, racism, violence, and the strain of creativity led to many artists' downfall. Each vignette is well developed and makes you feel that you are there with the musician featured in each respective vignette, seeing things through their eyes as they experience their story. If you have an interest in jazz of the bebop era, I'd recommend giving it a read.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

But Beautiful soars, it flits, it builds with big crescendos, and it breathes in syncopation. It doesn’t always play the notes our melody-trained minds might expect; it plays better ones instead. It’s writing about jazz. It’s writing as jazz. Beyond that, I can’t think of a better way to describe Dyer’s purpose than to lift large chunks of his preface.

When I began writing this book I was unsure of the form it should take. This was a great advantage since it meant I had to improvise and so, from the start, the writing was animated by the defining characteristic of its subject.

Before long I found I had moved away from anything like conventional criticism. The metaphors and similes on which I relied to evoke what I thought was happening in the music came to seem increasingly inadequate. Moreover, since even the briefest simile introduces a hint of the fictive, it wasn't long before these metaphors were expanding themselves into episodes and scenes. As I invented dialogue and action, what was emerging came more and more to resemble fiction. At the same time, though, these scenes were still intended as commentary either on a piece of music or on the particular qualities of a musician. What follows, then, is as much imaginative criticism as fiction.

Many scenes have their origin in well-known or even legendary episodes: Chet Baker getting his teeth knocked out, for example. These episodes are part of a common repertory of anecdote and information -- “standards,” in other words, and I do my own versions of them, stating the identifying facts more or less briefly and then improvising around them, departing from them completely in some cases. This may mean being less than faithful to the truth but, once again, it keeps faith with the improvisational prerogatives of the form. Some episodes do not have their origins in fact: these wholly invented scenes can be seen as original compositions). […] Throughout, my purpose was to present the musicians not as they were but as they appear to me.

Then he does precisely that. Beautifully.

There’s a fair amount of the black experience that folds into the telling of jazz. Despite being a white guy from England, Dyer’s treatment sure seemed plausible to me. There was often a feeling of otherworldliness to it, too, like the lens was a little out of focus and the lighting was dim. The music he described was all the more vivid in contrast. Both the subject matter and Dyer’s writing itself offered glimpses – no, more like long, appreciative gazes – into the creative process.

While it’s true to say that you can appreciate this book without having much interest in jazz, it’s a bonus if you do. I enjoyed playing Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Keith Jarrett while I read it. For all I know, the experience may have been enhanced by smoking, drinking, and shooting up, too, but I stopped short of that. As honest, and artful, and creative as this was, I’m just glad I experienced it in any state.

[John Banks · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

A Reread

Dyer's But Beautiful is among my favourite works of fiction that centrally feature music and musicians. Just before New Years 2020 I purchased myself a lovely set of sennheiser headphones and have been catching up on some of my old favourite Jazz albums as well as more contemporary material. I decided in the process to reread this book before getting to David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue that's been sitting in my tbr pile for past few months.

But Beautiful is more than just about jazz music, scenes and musicians. It's gorgeously and painfully imbued with the spirit, tones and rhythmic pulse of jazz. I don't think I've ever read prose that just so gets music and conveys that through words.

The book is structured around a series of vignettes, imaginatively reconstructing events in the lives of famous jazz musicians. A linking thread is provided by an account of Duke Ellington driving through heartland USA with a fellow band member, from gig to gig. Along the way he's thinking about and living jazz, including in the way he experiences everything around him.

Musicians featured include Thelonious Monk, Art Pepper, Chet Baker, Lester Young, Mingus. Here's a passage from early in the book describing Pres (Lester Young), the gifted tenor saxophonist:

"Lester's sound was soft and lazy but there was always an edge in it somewhere. Sounding like he was always about to cut loose, knowing he never would: that was where the tension came from. He played with the sax tilted off to one side and as he got deeper into his solo the horn moved a few degrees further from the vertical until he was playing it horizontally, like a flute. You never got the impression he was lifting it up; it was floating away from him - and if that was what it wanted to do he wouldn't try to hold it down."

On Monk:

"There were also days when he was stranded between things, when the grammar of moving through the day, the syntax holding events together fell apart. Lost between words, between actions, not knowing something as simple as getting through a door, the rooms of the apartment became a maze. The use of things eluded him, the association between an object and its function was not automatic. Entering a room, he seemed surprised that his is what a door existed for. He ate food as if he was astonished by it, as if a roll or sandwich was infinitely mysterious, like he had no recollection of the taste from last time. Once he sat through dinner, peeled an orange like he'd never seen one before, silent all the while until, looking down at the long curl of peel, he said: ' - shapes, a huge grin breaking over his face.'"

A scene describing Ben Webster in English countryside:

"The forest was full of the damp silence of old rain dripping through the leaves. Ben was at the edge of the forest, leaning against the gatepost, looking out over the fields at the smoke drifting from a farmhouse in the distance, the clouds moving slowly over the dark hills. We stayed very still, not making a sound, as if we had suddenly come across some beautiful bird that no one had even seen in such a place. You ask me what his music mean to me. I can't hear his music without thinking of that afternoon. To me that is what his music sounds like, that is what it mans to be. That's all i can say"

On Mingus:

"Mingus Mingus Mingus - not a name but a verb, even thought was a form of action, of internalized momentum.

Gradually he assumed the weight and dimensions of his instrument. He got so heavy that the bass was something he just slung over his shoulder like a duffel bag, hardly noticing the weight. The bigger he got, the smaller the bass became. He could bully it into doing what he wanted. Some people played the bass like sculptors, carving notes out of an unwieldy piece of stone; Mingus played it like he was wrestling, getting in close, working inside, grabbing at the neck, and plucking strings like guts. His fingers were strong as pliers. People claimed to have seen him hold a brick between thumb and forefinger and leave two small dimples where he's pinched it. Then he'd touch the strings as softly as a bee landing on the pink petals of an African flower growing some place no one had ever been. When he bowed it he made the bass sound like the humming of a thousand-strong congregation in Church."

Dyer gets to he heart of these musical genius misfits, including the pain of their drug addictions and experience of not fitting in. But more than anything his prose swings like a fine ensemble improvising in some passages to find that distinctive voice and then in others returning to the standard. Brilliant, beautiful writing.

Now let's see how Mitchell's Utopia Avenue holds up in terms of conveying that sense of musicians, music scenes and their cultures and the music itself. I've heard mixed things about Utopia Avenue but looking forward to reading it.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Being a fan of both Geoff Dyer and jazz this combination was looking like a win win situation - and it absolutely was. Big surprise for me though, is that it's little about the actual music, and more about the personalities and life moments from eight of the biggest jazz figures we've ever known - including the likes of Duke Ellington, Chet Baker & Charles Mingus - all told with great passion using fiction that creates imaginative criticism. The book moved me in ways I never thought it would, as Dyer captures the worn out, drug & drink induced, alienated souls that some of these musicians were. For fans of non-fiction jazz books, I can see that this work could be problematic in the way it takes widely available material on the subjects and puts a fanciful fictional twist on everything. But for me, the book on the whole just worked a treat, and I will definitely read it again.

[John Darnielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only leave a review on Goodreads if I enjoy a book -- I don't have the time or inclination to write pans. And this book is a great and enjoyable read, one I looked forward to picking up every time I did so; I had some reservations about the great-man theory thinking that seemed to inform much of the going, but fair enough for a book about jazz, which loves its icons, which traffics in the art of iconography. And the writing is good, very good in many passages, and the portraits vivid; and the underlying sense of broader critique (which I'd summarize as a version of Matthew 13: 53, "A prophet has no honor is his home town") is really very good. And then Dyer writes an afterword which had me saying aloud, once every page or two: "That's not true! What you're saying is not true!" This really took the air out of the tires for me; he knows his jazz, for sure, but several of the claims he makes about it, once he's writing criticism instead of telling stories, are false, and more of the ones that are editorial -- well, I disagree with them! I don't need a whole lot of Adorno when I'm thinking about jazz, and I need even less Harold Bloom, but both are served up by the hot, steaming scoopful in this afterward, to no good end. I do still recommend this book; it's deeply moving, and a potent reminder of how poorly America has treated its greatest innovators, its deepest cultural legacy. When Dyer writes about the music, he succeeds where many others have failed in capturing the sense of its sound, of its power. But the book should be reprinted without the afterword. Sometimes it's best to let the stories speak for themselves.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, some gushing: Geoff Dyer is my favorite non-fiction writer ever and probably the best and most interesting author that you’ve never heard of. In these desperate days of tell-all memoirs, dry scholarly works, and self-help books, Dyer has forged ahead at full speed, writing self-deprecating, smart and funny genre-bending essays and books. And you can tell how much fun he’s having.

His book Out of Sheer Rage, which is impossible to categorize, forever changed the way I look at writing. The book, which is about him wanting to write a book about D. H. Lawrence, read like a 300-page preface to a book that he never got around to and promoted replacing literary criticism with, well, more literature. Reading it felt like someone embracing me and whispering in my ear, “It’s okay to have fun, Sarah. It’s okay to try new things. Really, it’s probably what you have to do.” In fact, in writing about him publicly, I feel like I’m giving away a secret.

So – why did it take me so long to read But Beautiful? I bought it a few years ago just because Dyer wrote it, but never read it because I didn’t really have an interest in or knowledge of jazz. Fortunately, though, I picked it off the bookshelf last week and found myself in love all over again.

How should a person write about jazz? After a typical Dyer-esque inner struggle in which he tried everything and then dismissed it all, the answer was clear: he would follow the rules and ways of the music. The result is a collection of eight chapters, each focused on a different jazz legend: Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Chet Baker.

Are these chapters fiction or non-fiction? True or not? Well, Dyer says, um, yes and no. He took from a lot of famous stories and quotes (standards) and then adapted them (improvised) and basically did what he felt like. The result captures the spirit of jazz more than any academic essay or novel or biography ever could. As I learned the tenets and tendencies of the music, I saw them being utilized by Dyer in his own prose at the same time. And this is all on top of his beautiful, funny, and straightforward writing style.

Just like Duke Ellington’s “Take the Coltrane “ Or Charles Mingus’ “Open Letter to Duke” (see how much I learned about jazz?), Dyer’s book is a tribute and also a work of art in it’s own right – it steals, echoes, references, riffs, and retells. It’s word jazz. Those who know a lot about jazz will pick up on many more of the allusions and the hidden quotes while those who don’t know much can just sit back and enjoy the music of the prose and learn as they go.

Not to mention the heartbreaking portraits it paints of the artist themselves and their often-tragic lives on the road and on stage – in between drug and alcohol addictions, discrimination, violence, mental illness, and, well, the blues. As someone who always had trouble listening to jazz, I can now access it and understand it better – envisioning Mingus sitting at the piano that could only fit in the kitchen of his small apartment, composing among the daily lives of his wife and children. Seeing Lester Young’s young talent be destroyed by life in the army (the most jazz-killing environment you can imagine). Sitting in the car with Duke, perpetually on the road.

And for those readers still itching to know some facts and read some traditional criticism, Dyer attached a 30-page essay to the back of the book. Although the essay is interesting and solidifies much of what you’ve just read in the body of the book, it seems a bit like an apology for being so whimsical (or, perhaps, something his editor made him add). Either way, it doesn’t take away from the bulk of Dyer’s project.

This is just one of those books – I want to scream its name from the rooftops.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best Jazz book ever. Dyer brings a novelist's skill to this book which describes the lives and music of a dozen greatest jazz musicians America ever produced. We don't find out about Monk, we become Monk, we live his life, feel his tone. Devastating.

[Noce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Istruzioni per un’adeguata lettura.

- Sciogliete accuratamente le parole di questo libro, in una sera tiepida in cui non avete niente da fare, e immergetevi nella lettura con un sottofondo di musica jazz, a volume medio. Prima di levare lo sguardo dal libro, e ritornare alla solita routine abbiate cura di non strofinare via le emozioni che vi sono cadute addosso. Piuttosto frizionatele e lasciate che vi detergano l’anima.

- Risciacquate bene la malinconica melodia interiore di cui ormai siete preda, in modo da togliere eventuali tracce di agenti estranei (che so, l’eco di un nocivo ritornello di qualche canzone di Gigi D’Alessio e consorte, involontariamente sentito alla radio, mentre la mattina eravate imbottigliati nel traffico. Oppure l’intro di qualche trasmissione televisiva culturalmente elevata, come “Le tagliatelle di nonna Pina” che fanno da trionfale ouverture all’entrata della Clerici).

- Asciugate in un panno, la scala cromatica delle emozioni che questo libro vi ha suscitato, e stiratela, ancora palpitante, al rovescio, badando a mantenere la sua forma naturale intatta, senza pieghe, facendo scorrere delicatamente il ferro da stiro nel senso delle vibrazioni, ed evitando di allargare il senso di silenzio che cerca di rifare capolino nella vostra serata.

- Vi consiglio inoltre di cambiare ripetutamente il jazz che state ascoltando, alternando Ellington a Baker, Mingus a Monk, Parker a Jarrett, Coltrane a Powell, affinché non si debba ricorrere a una lettura violenta e affrettata, e vanificare così l’effetto salutare di questa storia d’amore musicale, lunga quanto il brivido di una nota di sax.

Piccola postilla: al mondo ci sono due tipi di persone. Quelli che quando parlano di jazz, citano la stra-abusata frase straccia maroni di Baricco, “Quando non sai cos’è, allora è jazz, gnè gnè gnè”. E poi ci sono quelli che invece ti fanno il nome di questo libro, o te lo regalano.

E giusto per introdurvi all'atmosfera ideale, vi regalo pure questo: http://youtu.be/ecrE80rnjhw

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly superb- luminous, lyrical, subdued, kind of blue.

As I read it I heard the sound of the music limn the edges of the characters Dyer presents, who happen to be not only some of the lodestars of the jazz world but also certifiably brilliant 20th Century composers, by any standard you care to mention...Lester Young ("Pres" to Lady Day, who named her, and she him), Ben Webster, Art Pepper, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker ("the James Dean of Jazz"- a term I don't like all that much except it just seems correct enough to be impermeable), Thelonious Sphere Monk, Bud Powell...and some really fine and finely etched intervening portraits of Theodore "Duke" Ellington and his right hand man (Strayhorn being, perhaps the "left") Harry Carney en route to the next concert destination, somewhere, in lyrical italicized interludes that really do illuminate something of the hushed, churning, hollow sound of a car going fast deep at night, with moonlight and flat fields all around on every side...the archetype of the Jazz Musician as much as the instigator and paterfamilas. Brillaint framing device for Dyer, evocatively concieved and created.

I knew some of the figures pretty well already though Dyer gave them sparks of prosaic life which made something literarily tangible of the images already collected in my mind. Monk swaying soberly side to side on the corner, mumbling his hellos to the people in his community who love him; Mingus' violent striving for creative transformation and respect matched with the turmoil in his hands and heart; Chet Baker's impassive, indifferent, marble-faced vulnerability, whose unschooled horn captures the terrible moment when a woman's face scrunches up and is about to unleash a flood of tears and you wish upon wish that you could take back what you just did to make such pain just so. Yes.

There's something of the sway of jazz in his prose, not in the clammy handedness of bat Beat poetry, or the affected, aggravating of Miles impersonation ("smooth jazz, man, can you dig my lonely sunglasses and cig smoke?") but a real feel- a lover's feel, a fan's tribute, a scholar's daydream- for the rythmn, harmony, intimate shift of key and lyric, which might be found in, say, this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=...

or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmiRn...

or...this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ1WHn...

I've heard some stirrings that, in this age of hypertext and kindles and whatnot, there are more books coming out with audio soundtracks. I like this idea enormously, for many reasons. One of them is because of books like this: Dyer's text would be even better were it enhanced by a soundtrack. This isn't to slight the prose at all, since there's music in every sentence- music of all kinds, shapes, varieties, shades, whispers and shrieks- but as I'm sure Dywer himself would agree, there's ultimately nothing like the real thing.

the reader gets the sensation that Dywer did his research- he mentions up front by way of introduction that the anecdotes he tells within his text are as probably apocrephal as they are possibly true, like all stories shared within an ephemeral community- with the music foremost in mind. He mentioned in an interview that when he first started digging through some archives one of the petty clerks who ran the place asked him insouciantly what permission he had to write a book like this, being neither a musician, theorist, or scholar in any traditional sense of the word- and he replied, honestly and frankly, "none. Except that I like it." Exactly.

One thing I hate about being a jazz lover is that aside from all the cliches about hipness and neo-Beat nonsense and poses and so on, is the idea that it's remote, inaccessibly academic, elitist, and so on. It could be, if one wanted to cozy up with some turgid books on theory to find why the caged Bird sang, decode Dizzy, or make exgaminations of Monk- which would be iinteresting and cool in and of itself- but I haven't got a lick of theory or even basic nuts-and-bolts knowledge about music at all and I've listened to jazz just about every day for years.

It's about opening yourself up to the force of the music, the blue notes, the rythmn, the speech, the visceral thrill- and thrilling it is, trust me on this- of

Charlie Parker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTTQZ...

Mingus in full throttle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK7xbK...

or the expressionism of Coltrane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plafqY...

or Ornette Coleman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNbD1J...

Maybe we consider some balladry....

Like, well, Chet Baker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug2LQx...

Or Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg7Uua...

Or Bill Evans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2LFVW...

Or Miles Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Jimmy Cobb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3W_al...

See what I mean? This music is fairly drizzling with poetry and emotion and dance and imagination. You don't need a microscope to see it.

Dyer wisely constructs some elliptical scenarios for his characters, not overpowering them or putting words into their mouth. Not, for that matter, overtly inserting very much music into the text, which was a wise move. the music is all in the words, the setting of the (usually rather dismal, crepuscular, existentially aching) scene. This is a collection of prose snapshots about lonely men, skilled and sensitive, whose music wears itself out in them, which obviates some desolation and outright madness when the crazy hours and the stress and the pressure of performance, tradition, racist hostility (Dyer is exceptionally aware of this professional hazard, and renders it unflinchingly and with spare, objective immediacy)and constant spiritual risk. Dyer never lets us forget for a moment that these are people who have been panstakingly improvising with formal exactitude and gutbucket gusto for decades. In many cases, existential solipsism seems to be the price paid, nearly in full.

The closing chapter is a thoughtful, considered and considerate musing about the anxiety of historical influence w/r/t jazz's place as a performance art, a dance upon the wires of sound and silence, and a form which echoes in several rather incisive ways the status of the human spirit in the 20th Century. It's about struggle, innovation, alienation, and the chords which bind and thrill the heart of a nation. What nation that might be is, and has beenm, quite literally up for grabs.

Dyer's useful quotations from eminent thinkers like Adorno, Bloom, Berger, and Steiner are guideposts within the now-seemingly lost or antiquated world of a music that sang the world just a couple generations ago. Dyer has some very interesting and elegant formulations on The Shape of Jazz Today and though it's easy, he thinks, for people to write it off as a passing fad, a grandfather's musings for young men, the very act of writing such a loving and penetrative study of America's music perpetuates the life within it by virtue of its own existence. Dyer describes jazz as a kind of perpetual twilight at noon, historically speaking. Is this vauge? Cauterized? Mournful? Ruminative? Premature? Maybe.

Does it matter? This music never ends even if, in the end, we hear only ourselves.

Listen...listen... listen .....

[Ubik 2.0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

9 apostoli del Jazz

Peccato (per me) che questa sfilata di racconti, che vede protagonisti altrettante leggende del jazz, sia imperniata su musicisti che appartengono a una generazione (forse due) precedente a quella che ha profondamente influenzato il mio gusto musicale e caratterizzato la mia epoca; il che condiziona la mia partecipazione emotiva alle vicende umane e artistiche di questi maestri, anche se in effetti due o tre di loro ho potuto ascoltarli dal vivo, quando ormai si esibivano nello status di “monumenti” a fine carriera.

L’operazione messa in atto da Geoff Dyer è comunque interessante e molto appassionata, estrapolando da vecchie incisioni, foto estemporanee, brani di diario e frammenti di autobiografie, una ricostruzione romanzata (“considerate che quanto leggerete è stato inventato o modificato, non riportato” ci avverte l’autore stesso) degli albori e della evoluzione del bebop, attraverso la tormentata esistenza dei suoi artefici, di cui vengono colti momenti significativi, spesso drammatici.

La raccolta di racconti incorre talora in qualche rischio di ripetitività, non certo per mancanza di creatività e fantasia da parte di Dyer, che anzi qua e là tende a profonderne in eccesso…, bensì a causa della notevole comunanza di elementi biografici ed esistenziali che assimila individui pur così singolari caratterialmente e, senza eccezioni, dotati di personalità a dir poco fuori dal comune e non solo per le doti innate di talento musicale e sensibilità artistica.

La propensione all’abuso di alcool, psicofarmaci e droghe, la malferma salute mentale e fisica aggravata dalla vita logorante delle estenuanti tournée, percorse senza sosta in lungo e in largo negli States ed anche in Europa, giacché le incisioni discografiche non rappresentavano una sufficiente fonte di sostentamento, la solitudine e la fine precoce (nessuno di costoro, eccetto Duke Ellington, raggiunse i 65 anni…) sono segni distintivi di vite bruciate dall’energia creativa che pur con diversa intensità caratterizza i nove musicisti ai quali è dedicato il libro, bianchi o neri, liberi o rinchiusi in carcere per eccessi vari, pacati o violenti.

Oltre a varie appendici biblio-discografiche, la raccolta è seguita da un’interessante e approfondita postfazione che contestualizza l’attività artistica dei maestri e si spinge a individuarne gli epigoni, ricolloca l’espressione del jazz nella storia di ribellione e rivendicazione, individuale o collettiva, negli anni dal dopoguerra in poi, ridisegna la parabola evolutiva della musica a partire dal blues fino alla fine del secolo (il libro è del 1993, anche se gli aggiornamenti nell’edizione italiana si estendono al 2013.

[Gert De Bie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wauw.

Zelden lazen we een boek met een titel die zo mooi en treffend de lading dekt en nooit lazen we zo graag al dan niet gefictionaliseerde biografische portretten die zo dicht bij de kern van hun onderwerp komen als in dit bijzondere boek. Een originele opzet die uitmuntend uitgevoerd werd.

In 'But Beautiful: A book about Jazz' schetst Geoff Dyer 7 portretten van grote namen uit de jazzgeschiedenis (Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Ben Webster, Chet Baker, Art Pepper en Charles Mingus) en wisselt die portretten af met een doorlopend relaas uit de legendarische roadtrips van Duke Ellington & Harry Carney.
Geoff Dyer streeft niet naar een historische opsomming van feiten of een biografisch levensoverzicht, maar zoekt in al dan niet geficitionaliseerde scènes uit de muzikanten hun bestaan naar de kern van hun wezen, de vonken van hun creativiteit en de tragiek aan de keerzijde van de medaille.

Daarin komt de titel mooi uit de verf: 'But beautiful' verwijst naar de schoonheid, de passie en de intensiteit van de muzikale erfenis van de beschreven jazzgrootheden, terwijl de beschreven scènes vooral focussen op de tragiek van hun levens: verslavingen, agressie, veroordelingen, de onmogelijkheid om relaties aan te gaan, ...

Geoff Dyer laat de muzikanten aan het woord via historisch gedocumenteerde quotes, verantwoordt de uitgewerkte scènes door encyclopedisch en historisch opzoekwerk, maar liet zich vooral inspireren door foto's en beelden uit hun levens. Dat geeft hem de nodige vrijheid om de scènes literair uit te werken en de klemtonen te leggen waar hij zelf wil.

De timide zachtheid van Chet Baker, de woeste, muzikale, verbale of fysieke agressie van Charles Mingus, het alcoholmisbruik van Lester Young, de schizofrenie/psychose van Bud Powell en de machteloze muzikant die daar uit groeit: allemaal brengt hij het met veel mededogen en respect voor mens en muzikant in beeld.

Dat maakt van But Beautiful een erg bijzonder boek: tragisch maar mooi, intens en vlot leesbaar, triest en leerrijk en zelden had ik het gevoel zo dicht bij de essentie te komen van beschreven lezers. Hoed af.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on real jazz musicians, Geoff Dyer has improvised and imagined stories of their lives. It blends fiction with non-fiction. Musicians include Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Thelonius Monk, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Art Pepper, Bud Powell, and more. This is a beautifully written set of stories, riffing on a theme, which calls to mind the performances of jazz music. Each story focuses on different musicians, and includes the challenges they faced in life, such as racism, drug addictions, alcohol abuse, financial difficulties, and mental health issues.

I was looking for a book about jazz and came across this little gem. From my various reading experiences, I find it difficult to find well-written books about music, but Dyer does a wonderful job! The writing is brilliant. I particularly enjoyed the vignettes of Duke Ellington and Harry Carney on the road. I could easily picture the use of natural phenomena in the creation of music. I’ve been in this car, except without Harry and Duke:

“Thunder stumbled around in the darkness. A few drops of rain splattered the windshield and then a storm engulfed them. Wind howled across the fields, pummeling the side of the car. Rain drilled the roof. Harry looked across at Duke, slumped in his seat and gazing ahead, the headlights of approaching cars splashing like fireworks in the streaming windshield. It was exactly episodes like this that found their way into his music in one way or another.”

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ó céus, que delícia de livro. São oito contos cujos estilos são correlatos da vida e obra dos respectivos músicos: Lester Young, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Ben Webster, Chet Baker, Art Pepper e arrematando todos eles a fragmentação de Duke Ellington e Harry Carney. Cada conto traz uma nova perspectiva do porque suas entranhas reagem diferentemente a cada um deles, por exemplo, agora me ficou completamente claro o porquê eu me identificar tanto com a música do Chet Baker.
Estou tirando uma estrelinha das cinco que daria a esse livro porque não há um conto que norteie vida e música de Miles Davis, não sei se por alguma razão subjetiva do autor ou por ele não ter encontrado uma forma literária que exemplifique o que venha a ser Miles Davis dentro do Jazz, mas tal frustração acaba sendo compensada pelo ótimo texto de encerramento do livro, um ensaio sobre a natureza rizômica do jazz.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess you’d call this creative nonfiction. A former colleague recommended this book to me after reading some of my own thoughts on the life-affirming and health-inducing aspects of listening to jazz as I deal with a visitation of brain cancer. The great irony is that the joyous practice of improvisation in smoky clubs of the bebop era was so virulently self-destructive for its musicians.

In Dyer’s evocative and impressionistic character sketches of several of its iconic figures (Lester Young, Bud Powell, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Ben Webster, Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus) we witness mostly downward trajectories, as drugs, prison, racism, alcoholism, mental illness, and violence take their toll. Whether or not you think of them as survivors, you come to understand that the music they invented and played was an act of defiance and subversion in the face of demons both internal and external.

I don’t want this to sound over dramatized. Dyer immerses the reader in his imagined subjective world of each musician, and that world is seldom as harrowing as it appears from outside. Like some, Lester Young floats in the isolation of an alcohol haze, never quite sure if he is living or already dead. Thelonious Monk glories in an ongoing rage against fellow musicians and the instrument he plays. Meanwhile, some escape to Europe, where they find an appreciative audience and are granted a reprieve from the vestiges of Jim Crow discrimination.

If anyone fares badly in the book, it is Chet Baker, who is portrayed musically as someone whose seductiveness as a performer was always in the form of promises he never kept—a self-absorption that verged on coitus interruptus. Dyer bases his book on biographical and historical accounts, but is more interested in impressions than fact. The end result is a cross between dream and documentary. While representing jazz composition and performance as driven by the effort to capture evanescent and transcendent moods (think of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo”), Dyer’s lucidly clear prose is a wonder of poetic expression.

He closes the book with a stimulating essay on mid-century jazz, with an overview of the wave of high-profile jazz musicians who followed in the decades since (Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett), while illuminating some of the key issues that have animated the discourse of musicologists who have never lost their love for the genre. There is also a discography and a lengthy bibliography.

[Joe Kraus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Legend has it that someone once asked Louis Armstrong how to define jazz. His answer, “If you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”

With that principle in mind, I’ll try to avoid asking exactly what sort of book – beyond satisfyingly cool – Geoff Dyer has written. He tells us in the opening that this is jazz criticism, sort of. At the same time, he admits that he’s fabricated – OK, just imagined – many if not most of the details. Then, he admits that he has spent much of the book improvising, which makes this an improvisation on improvisation, or a kind of written jazz itself. And we may as well throw in the possibility that this is also a kind of poetry.

So: Criticism? Fiction? Word jazz? Poetry? Let’s just say it hits all the notes and several in-between.

The frame narrative here imagines the great Duke Ellington driving cross country with his ace alto player, Harry Carney, at the wheel. They drive and talk a little, and Duke imagines some of the great players. Or, maybe, Dyer imagines some of the great players through Duke’s experiences. Or, maybe, we just segue into one or another of the seven core chapters here.

The effect is really a lot like listening to a jazz album, one track vaguely bleeding into the next.

The first of the profiles is of Lester Young, and – as proves true of each chapter – Dyer helps give me fresh ears for hearing the man. The “Pres” that he shares is older, largely spent. He’s haunted by the idea that others play his style better than he does. One younger cat even tells him, “You aren’t you. I’m you.”

It’s a sad and almost broken figure, but it’s also compelling. It had been awhile, but I put one some of Young’s work and went at it. And I heard a fear behind the music I hadn’t heard before, a sense that someone or something was chasing him.

And, yes, the music sounded fresh again.

That’s a gift sufficient to the book as a whole, but it turns out to be true of his insights in almost every case. We get a portrait of Thelonius Mont that plays up his physicality. I don’t have the exact line, but Dyer suggests that Monk didn’t so much play the piano as play his own body. The piano was how he got the sound out, but that was only part of it. Sure enough, when I watched a Monk concert on Youtube, I saw it. In the middle of someone else’s solo, he stood up and danced – not for the performance but because he had to let the music get out somehow.

Then there’s a gorgeous look at Bud Powell, one of my all-time favorites. He’s scared and scarred, a schizophrenic frightened by racism and memories of a brutal cop beat-down. Even without playing some of his music again, I can hear that element in the music I know fairly well. It’s dark, and it is – as Dyer says, “but beautiful.”

Then it’s Ben Webster in all his smooth dignity. Here again, I recall the Webster I have listened to – and listened to again and again – and I find the words for what drew me to the man. He is of himself, large and self-possessed. He chose Europe because Europe let him define himself. So he fought with Ellington? That’s all right. Webster needed to chart his own path, not someone else’s, even if that someone else was an even greater genius.

We switch to Charles Mingus for a glimpse of someone impossible to pigeonhole. Dyer tells us that Mingus didn’t look for sidemen so much as for someone who could channel his ideas on a different instrument. I find myself imagining some five-piece combo of Mingus clones, all wild-haired and communicating with each other in a language intelligible only to them.

And an extra gift here is the sense that Rahsaan Roland Kirk comes as close as anyone to being such a Mingus clone. And with that thunderclap, I think I get Kirk in ways I never quite have. Brilliant musician that he is, he’s generally eluded me. But Mingus on a water whistle? (When he’s not playing three saxophones at once.) That I can start to understand.

The last two profiles are Chet Baker and Art Pepper, California white guys I’ve listened to, but for whom I’ve never had a phase for. I can still here Baker – gentle, fragile, and oh-so-gone – and the violence of someone breaking his front teeth and ruining his embrasure (as well as his looks) hurts in ways I’ve never fully felt before.

Pepper, I admit, has never quite done it for me, but, thanks to Dyer, I’ll circle back to him. There’s a junkie dreaminess here, a sense that he’s drifted outside the orbit of the world and can’t quite find his way home. Maybe that’s a Pink Floyd experience of jazz. (Note: Any comparison I make to Pink Floyd is not favorable; I’ve always strongly disliked the band.) Or, maybe, I’ll follow Dyer’s lead and figure out how to hear him right.

So, what is this book in the end? Well, if you’re asking, you may never know. I won’t pretend to the status of authority, but I think, just maybe, I do know. Read it, Pres, if you hear what it’s shouting.

[Il Pech · Rating 5 out of 5]

LESTER Amava Frasi lunghe
come steli di tulipani
in un mondo di Grida
tagliate a spazzola

Rinserrato in se stesso,
occhieggiando da dietro la sua faccia come un vecchio che spia tra le tende socchiuse, per lui
La morte non era una frontiera,
era andare alla deriva travolto da Ondate di alcool dai Bordi metallici

I colori stavano scivolando via dalle cose
& Le lenzuola erano grigie alghe bagnate nella stanza sommersa dalla foschia marina del neon verde
Solo piangendo riusciva a smettere di urlare
e solo urlando smetteva di piangere.









MONK
così fuori da sembrare una giacca
senza nessuno dentro
Doveva entrare in un motivo
come trapano nel legno.

Riuscito a seppellirsi in un brano
Suonava il piano come se
non ne avesse mai visto uno prima.
Ci arrivava da tutte le parti, usando i gomiti, tirando fendenti.
Tutto veniva fuori storto,
come se ogni tocco sulla tastiera correggesse un errore
e a sua volta diventasse
un nuovo errore da correggere.
La musica
Non avrebbe dovuto reggere
e invece reggeva
sul timore che tutto
potesse
crollare
all'improvviso




MINGUS
La sua musica
traboccante di vita
Selvaggiamente devastante
Si avvicinava al caos primordiale del pensiero
Ascoltarlo
Era come leggere un libro stampato su burro sciolto, coi punti fermi che slittavano nel mezzo di una frase
Le sue note diventavano pesanti
Gravate di terra umida
Ma
Quando la musica
al culmine dell'intensità
raggiungeva una pressione ancora più alta di quella che lui aveva dentro
Il suo basso faceva marciare tutti come una baionetta puntata nella schiena
&
Niente poteva vincere quella forza dirompente





CHET ti portava così vicino alla solitudine...
Lui non metteva niente di sé nella sua musica. Suonava le ballad di sempre con una lunga serie di carezze che non portavano da nessuna parte e scemavano nel nulla. Ogni volta che intonava una nota le diceva addio. La musica si sentiva abbandonata da lui, le canzoni si sentivano trascurate...
Non era il suo modo di suonare ad essere carico di sentimento, lo era la canzone stessa, perché si sentiva ferita. Ogni nota cercava di rimanere con lui un poco di più, implorandolo. Era tutto lì, tutti i romanzi del mondo non avrebbero potuto dire di più sugli uomini e sulle donne. E sugli istanti che si accendono tra loro come stelle.







ART udiva l'invariato ruggire e fremere di un mare molecolare, una neve bianca di rumore, come una trasmissione da un altro pianeta, poi
D'un tratto galleggiava nello spazio e i colori divampavano e sbavavano.
Le pareti della stanza avevano conati di vomito, palle di giornali accartocciati respiravano lentamente.

Era come camminare su colline afflosciate.

Riconobbe il proprio sound in quel sax che si apriva un varco guizzando, nitido come un ombra, come un giorno caldo e sereno con gli uccelli che volano nel cielo senza suono.





BIG BEN si portava dietro la solitudine come la custodia di uno strumento. Interpretava le ballad così lentamente che si avvertiva il gravare del tempo su di lui. E più era lento, meglio era: aveva vissuto tanto e troppe erano le cose che doveva fare entrare in ogni nota.





BUDO ha 25 anni
Arrogante come un coltello
Che avverte un fruscio nel tessuto delle cose.
Consapevole per la prima volta degli spigoli
Ecco che i tasti fanno a gara per ricevere il Suo tocco

Le sue mani come lampi nel sole lucente
conoscono la tastiera come un uccello conosce il cielo

Poi
Tutti gli istituti psichiatrici sono uguali
Le cure non si distinguono dagli strumenti di punizione

Ma è la caduta, piuttosto che il salto mortale
Impeccabile
A esprimere la verità

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great jazz and good writing has been a wonderful combination for many years now. So by even its cover I knew this book is going to of some interest. Geoff Dyer has a real appreciation for the visual imagery of jazz - meaning that his writing is almost a series of snapshots of various legendary jazz figures. He captures each moment that is both touching and 'wow.'

The individual pieces in this book are held together by brief episodes of Duke Ellington and Harry Carney on the road that reads sort of existential that they do what they do - which is to travel, eat at dodgy diners, go to club/theater, play music and then go forward. But during this activity Ellington is consistently thinking of writing new music and he finds inspiration on the pacing and details of 'road' life. A very nice touch, and then it goes into incredible 'at the moment' portraits of Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Chet Baker, and the ultra-cool and poisonous Art Pepper. Dyer gets it right, and this is a really 'must' type of book for one's jazz library. Or I should just say music. You like sound, then get the book.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

This wasn't bad, but I couldn't help but wonder what the musicians evoked here would make of it. Like a lot of writers, Dyer sees perhaps too much meaning in music. The great thing about music, especially improvised instrumental music, is that it can be a space that transcends meaning, a space in which self expression and emotion are only a subset of what is going on. Dyer's afterword on the history and evolution of jazz, however, is a good introduction for the newcomer.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book was an enjoyable experience. I don't know what to call it - it isn't a novel so much as an account, based in reality but definitely reimagined by the author, so I guess I'll just call it a narrative for now. It's important because the in order to understand the narrative I think it is important to read the foreword, in which Dyer explains the liberties he took and his sources and inspiration, while the narrative is something else entirely (the main event, of course), and then the afterword is a great read in and of itself.

The main event here, the narrative, was delicious. Like everything jazz that I read, I have a feeling I'll want to come back to it one day, when I know more about jazz. Nothing like reading a book like this to make me realize how far behind I am! I really gotta brush up on everybody who isn't Armstrong, Davis, or Baker. I went out and bought a Monk record after reading his section; I turned back to old LPs in my collection almost every day I read part of this book. It heightened my curiosity and my thirst for good music.

I thought it was extremely clever to have Duke Ellington and Harry Carney be the dividers between sections, rather than to give them their own section. It worked well to have them perpetually traveling throughout the book, the connection between all the other players.

This was a hard read. I teared up often. The Bud Powell story was one of the most moving for me, but story after story wore me down (I resolved to read some fluffy fiction next, I need a happy ending soon!). Each was rooted in the tragedy of art: mental illness and addiction, alcoholism, womanizing and disconnection, huge swings from lows to highs to lows again.

But it was a beautiful read. Dyer's prose is elegant, lyrical, and effusive; if he weren't writing about music and art I think it would feel overdone. Instead it seemed effortless, and I was swept easily along. If I had underlined or noted anything, I might as well have underlined everything - the language here is simply rich. The torment of the individuals at the hands of their collective art is immense. The book is delicious.

I finished the book several days ago, then took a while to read the afterword. One page in, Dyer refers to The Portrait of a Lady as an example of art doubling as commentary and criticism - weird, as I had finished reading that book just the day before, so it all felt a bit serendipitous.

In the afterword Dyer muses on the genre, its roots, and it's future - all interesting, as it was written some 20 years ago. At some point he wonders "if the current fascination for all things jazz will prove more than a fad" - a question we seem to be asking now, as Nina Simone and Etta James and Miles Davis are all now enjoying a wave of popularity and appreciation. Does this mean a possible "fad" has lasted 20 years? Or does it mean that every 15-20 years the music trends come back to jazz? There is much to consider here, and much to learn more about. I feel that instead of having any questions answered, I only have more to ask.

And finally, the afterword gave me this little nugget: "While beats, hipsters, and Mailer's white Negroes were drawn instinctively to jazz as a music of rebellion, jazz is increasingly something people arrive at after becoming bored with the banality of pop music" (p. 205). I must concede: guilty as charged.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book. It's one of the best pieces of writing that I have ever read, and it's not just because I love Jazz. The approach of the writing is what I'd call unconventional because it claims to be neither fiction or non-fiction, which is a safe tack for the author to take. Even though, the book is not diminished by the author telling the reader all of this out in the preface; he says, point-blank, that it's what he's doing. He is attempting to tell the stories of a handful of jazzmen. These are intimate looks into the lives and feelings of these men, rendered in poetic and impressionistic prose, that would be impossible to represent as purely factual. However, the stories are meant to faithfully represent these men in factual and probable ways, but, again the story is told as if it were fictional. Meaning, some parts are written in the first person, others in the third, delving deep into the inner thoughts and desires of the person. Knowing what I was getting into I was not troubled by this tightrope walk between fact and fiction (as I feel I may have been had it been presented as non-fiction, or vice-versa, perhaps). It stayed far clear of anything like the "A Million Little Pieces" 'scandal.' As Dyer puts it in the preface, "As a rule, assume that what’s here has been invented or altered rather than quoted. Throughout, my purpose was to present the musicians not as they were but as they appear to me.”

The stories were moving and the writing poetic. It brought me into these people's lives. I learned, at least, how Dyer imagines these men's lives to be. And from what I knew about some of their personal lives, he attempted to render them (mostly) accurately.

Not only is the body of the book exceptional, the afterword is also some of the best critical music writing I've ever read.

I will most definitely read what else Dyer has written, no matter the subject. A most excellent book.

[Bonadext · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il libro e formato da nove racconti di nove artisti jazz... alcuni sono delle vere e proprie perle come quello su Mingus o quello di Art Pepper, altri mi sono piaciuti meno. I racconti sono carichi d'atmosfera e di sofferenza, la stile di Dyer è scorrevole, poetico e spesso straziante, ma questa "purtroppo" era la vita dei jazzisti dell'epoca. Molto interessante il saggio finale di cinquanta pagine scritto dallo stesso autore. Consigliato a chi ama la musica tutta.

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful. Everything I have read by Geoff Dyer is a pleasure to read, and each book has been totally different. I'm a big Jazz fan so I was already predisposed to relish this. Dyer writes semi-biographical, semi-fictionalised vignettes about a number of different musicians and ends with a passionate essay on Jazz as an art form. He claims that there is next to no good writing about it, and when I think about it I haven't read much criticism or analysis of Jazz, unlike with other forms of music. Books like On the Road by Kerouac, Rag Time by Doctorow and Jazz by Toni Morrison deal with Kazz quite well in fiction form from what I remember. Dyer explores the social, psychological and physical toll exerted on the musicians from being part of such a demanding way of life, but also offers an inste into why they thought it was a price worth paying. Inspired me to spend today listening to Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Charles Mingus, Art Tatum and Albert Ayler.